Interview: Tony Burrell

*This is a re-post from an interview I did a couple years ago*

Hey everyone! I know it has been quite some time since my last interview, and I think it’s pretty obvious why. I wanted to start out by saying how much I appreciate Tony for working with me and working around both of our schedules in order to get this interview done. Tony Burrell is my guest this week, and he is the founder/creator of The Welcome Network. I found Tony, his story and his job very interesting and I hope you all do as well! 

Here is their website: http://www.thewelcomenet.org

Tony grew up in north Hammond, IN and went to Saint Casimir Church. Around the time he was in middle school, his family moved to Munster, IN and Tony attended Saint Thomas Moore Catholic School and then Munster High School. Once he graduated, he went down to Bloomington to attend Indiana University. “I had the Bloomington experience” Tony said. “The first month I went down (to IU) and had the typical experience. I started going to parties and all that. My dorm was all guys at the time, and five of the guys on my floor started inviting me to bible studies.” Now, it’s important to note that Tony grew up in the Catholic church. He said that he always knew that “I had something to do with God, but I hadn’t put the pieces together for myself.” So, after his friends in his dorm asked him to attend bible studies with them, he thought “Okay, I’ll check it out.” 

After a while of attending bible study groups with his friends, they invited Tony to this weekend conference. Tony told me “After the speaker spoke one night, I went for a walk by myself. I was looking up at the stars and said something like ‘This is true, this is right’ and God kind of met me in that moment.” I love stories like this. Where people find God and they find purpose and belonging. Tony’s story becomes even better and I’ll tell you how as we go on. He goes on speaking about that moment when God met him, and he says “and that’s when I went from majoring in psychology to pretty much majoring in learning about God and minoring in psychology.”  That’s great. Tony ended up graduating from IU with a psychology degree, but little did he know that after graduation his life was going to change. 

About a year and a half after graduation, Tony ended up overseas in Kosovo doing mission work. “I made a deal with God that I would spend one year of my life doing mission work before getting to real work or whatever I was supposed to do with my life.” He had no idea this would be his life. Tony’s “one year of mission work” turned into three years in Kosovo, then seven years in Illinois and then three years in Macedonia. He said “after college, I ended up going with a group of five other recent IU graduates overseas. We had all been involved with Cru.” For those that don’t know, Cru is an interdenominational Christian organization for college students. The organization does mission trips around the world that last 1-12 weeks (Cru.org). Tony said he was “working with college students. Doing different things in Kosovo and Macedonia. It was all interspersed with medical mission work. We were more a Christian organization on the ground there.”  This, he says, is how he became familiar with refugee work.

After years of being overseas doing missionary work, Tony moved back to northwest Indiana. Once he was home, he quickly realized that many churches in the area had nothing organized to “reach out to the stranger, the newcomer” in their communities. He wanted change, and instead of complaining about it he went out and created it. A friend of his put him in touch with World Relief, which is a global Christian humanitarian organization. Tony went and shadowed them for a few weeks, and took a class on how to help people with immigration, which included immigrant legal needs and services. In 2014, he took a leap of faith and left Cru, an organization he had worked with for thirteen years, to create The Welcome Network. “What I do now is not the same as those years, but our organization still is faith based and we do what we do because Jesus said “Welcome the stranger” so what happened in college has set the course for my life.”

“When I started this in 2014, I did not anticipate that this would become a very controversial topic, or a very controversial way of serving people.” Tony is right. When he started this in 2014, obviously before the next presidential election and before Covid, it was impossible to guess that everything, especially immigration would become hyper-politicized. He is just trying to make a difference in the world. “It was also before the Paris attacks and the travel bans” he added. If you didn’t pick up on it yet, The Welcome Network is an organization that provides resources to immigrants. Their website states that they provide practical resources, spiritual mentoring, and real community to immigrant residents of northwest Indiana and south Chicago (thewelcomenet.org). “At the time I thought churches would really embrace this pretty easily because I know that churches care about mission and they care about sending people to share about Jesus. So I thought, well, if churches care about that then obviously they are going to care about people in their backyard.” He goes on to say that some churches have been very welcoming of the stranger. 

We continued our conversation on immigration and how it has become so political in recent years, so I asked Tony if he considered The Welcome Network a political organization or a place without politics that is willing to help and love anyone no matter what. He gave a really great answer, in my opinion. “I would say we all agree as staff that we are about the kingdom of God and there is no political party that captures the values of the kingdom. Some might say that one party captures it more than the other, and my attitude is that the politics of this world are all about power, and trying to keep that power and neither party really represents the kingdom of God.” I agree with him, both political parties are only after one thing: power. No party truly represents God or Christianity. Tony goes on to say “we are about belonging, and we are about the Kingdom. Twice we’ve gone to D.C. to talk with our representatives.” He tells me about their trips to Washington D.C. and how they always discuss very specific issues. They’ve met with Rep. Visclosky a few years ago as well as other Indiana representatives. They discussed the DREAM Act, as well as DACA. Tony said they were trying to get the DACA people their proper documentation because “it’s about keeping families together.” Again he states, “we are not a political organization. We are a strongly kingdom driven organization. But immigration and politics intersect.” 

Next, I asked Tony about his motivation. How he gets up each day to keep trying to help those who seek refuge. He spoke so passionately about his work. He started by saying “It’s really a meaningful mission and/or plan. It’s not something where I wake up and think ‘I have to do this’. It’s more about ‘oh we GET to do this, we get to help another family today’.” He continues to talk about how difficult it can be when trying to help someone whose first language isn’t English. It’s difficult for them to fill out the forms and know certain rules. He continued saying “So when helping someone with immigrant legal services, we partner with an organization down at the Texas border. So, when someone comes up asking for asylum, we have found some housing for them. That’s been a really rewarding experience, to find host programs and to get people on their feet, families on their feet and helping them find a pro bono attorney to help them file for asylum.” Another rewarding experience for Tony is when one of the families he helped, who live in Hammond, asked for a picture of his family. He said “They have no one here but they have three families here in the states who have embraced them, helped them get on their feet and they consider us family. Those type of things keep me motivated and Christ did so much for me, he’s given me belonging into the kingdom of God and we want to help other people regain their belonging that they’ve lost through war, persecution and things similar to that.” 

Although Tony has many great things he loves about his job, there are also some difficult parts too. He says that in this political climate today, things are tightening up with immigration and it is making it very difficult for him and his co-workers to serve people. “The refugee system is closed down pretty much. The USCIS regulations are being much more tightly regulated” he said. Tony goes on to say how the Remain in Mexico program is making it harder for people to come into our country and wait here while their asylum cases are being adjudicated. “Politics, maybe, is part of our challenge. I would say the bigger challenge is when I encounter other people who call themselves Christians, who are vehemently against what we do. Who don’t want to be welcoming, who are afraid to be welcoming, and I understand the concerns. When I meet a Christian who disagrees, that can be discouraging.” Although he was talking about the difficulties of his job, I could tell nothing was going to get him down. He was still in a great mood and seemed motivated as ever to help those in need. 

Before we ended our interview, there were a few things that Tony wanted to mention. He spoke about The Welcome Networks partnership with Kids Alive Lebanon. Once a year, the organizations take people from northwest Indiana to Lebanon to help Syrian refugees. It has been suspended this year due to covid. He said in 2019, “we took 18 people from northwest Indiana in two different weeks. I want to make people aware that there are great organizations on the ground in Lebanon, like Kids Alive, who are doing great work. This virus is making it harder for them.” Tony expanded on this topic by giving me the bigger picture of what they do. The Welcome Network has immigrant legal services, they have host families and refugee housing programs, as well as their partnership with Kids Alive Lebanon. “Those are the things we do, but the heart behind what we do is really to see the churches in our area become more welcoming. Whenever I can meet with a pastor or leaders of a church, I’d like to help them understand that this is not a political issue, this is a kingdom issue. If we can get churches to start welcoming programs of their own, then we’re having an exponential effect for the kingdom and that’s really what I’d like to see happen.”  

Tony was a great person to interview. He was polite and very passionate about his work. If you wanted to get involved with The Welcome Network, there are a few ways. You can go to their website and put your name in as a volunteer, or you can email information to info@thewelcomenet.org and let them know that you want to volunteer. You can also like their Facebook page, called The Welcome Network. About once a month, they post needs that the organization has on the Facebook page and anyone can donate if they would like. Tony also mentioned that they are going to need a lot of help renovating this home in Lansing, IL that they are purchasing for asylum seeking families. The Welcome Network also has office needs. However, with covid they have stopped having volunteers in their office the last few months. There are plenty of opportunities out there, and this is a great one. For those of you that like to donate your time and are passionate about doing God’s work, I encourage you to help this organization! 

I hope you all enjoyed this interview and I hope you found it as interesting as I did! 

Until next time,

Peter

Again, here is the website link: http://www.thewelcomenet.org